Humantific has published the Design Thinking Made Visible Project as part of our virtual book series. It provides a glimpse into Humantific’s ongoing Integrative Thinking Research Initiative underway for ten years and models how design thinking has already been reinvented to better serve as enabler of organizational and societal transformation.

This chapter of research provides a window into Humantific’s Design Thinking Made Visible research in progress in collaboration with numerous universities around the world.

This research project was designed as a collective sensemaking exercise that could be undertaken in undergraduate or graduate schools by professors and students without any special design thinking or innovation process mastery training provided.

Shown here are actual design process drawings, made by 5 groups of students in 5 schools, as well as their class innovation profiles.

Participating Schools Shown in this book:

Domus Academy, Italy

Aarhus School of Architecture, Denmark

National Institute for Design, India

University of Kassel, Germany

Regents Business School, UK

(Other schools are in progress)

Included in the book is a glimpse into how Humantific enables Integrative Thinking in organizations utilizing its Innovation Harmonics Framework.

This research predates and debunks the 2009 academic theory that thinking attributes (“reliability”, “validity”, etc) can be rigidly pre-assigned to individuals or teams based on discipline labels such as design, designer or business, business manager.

Finding 2

Some students in design schools have the same thinking preferences as some students in business schools and vice-versa.

Finding 3

Professors and students are generally unaware of how radically different design process approaches are from one person to another.

Finding 4

Many students of design/innovation are not accustomed to externalizing their thinking process.

Finding 5

For numerous students in this study, design thinking jumps off from a framed problem defined by a brief. Often there was no process activity upstream from the brief.

Finding 6

Design thinking processes often appear very different visually while similar fundamental steps can often be found within. Some steps appear universal, others situational.

Finding 7

Most design thinking processes seen here have assumptions embedded that outcomes will be product or service creation.

Finding 8

Most design thinking process models seen in this study contain no reference to behaviors.

Finding 9

This research makes visible why the orchestration of design innovation work remains complex and a key challenge for teams and organizations.

Finding 10

This research suggests that real tools and visually shareable results are extremely useful in moving understanding and dialogue regarding integrative thinking beyond stereotypical notions of design thinking and business thinking.

The Design Thinking Made Visible Project is intended to inform and inspire dialogue regarding the realities of Design Thinking and Integrative Thinking by Design already underway in organizations today.

To inquire about participating in Humantific’s Thinking Made Visible Research send an email to thinkingresearch (at) humantific (dot) com.